Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey has been claiming NATO shipments of weaponry to the military since the weekend, as part of what he called a secret deal during the Cardiff summit. He wants more now.
Heletey insisted that his country wants major increases in weapons shipments from NATO, and threatened to order a nuclear weapons program if the shipments weren’t big enough and fast enough, on the grounds that only nukes could stop the “Russian invasion.”
Ukraine inherited some nuclear arms from the Soviet Union’s dissolution, but gave them up as part of the 1994 Budapest agreement. Since the protester-imposed regime change earlier this year, the new government has repeatedly threatened to restart the program.
It is unclear, however, whether Ukraine’s shaky economy and struggling industrial base could even sustain a costly new nuclear weapons program, nor does it seem likely that Russia would stand idly by while they did so if they were creating the arms openly to target Russia.
The threat is almost surely an empty one, and aims at extorting arms out of NATO. Yet it could backfire, and eliminate NATO’s pro-Ukraine policy pretty quickly.
Standard histrionics. Ukraine is not known as a threshold nuclear state….
more like a threshold failed state…
cannot afford a peanut butter sandwich but will develop nukes? Borat could do a better job than any of those goofs.
Hmm. So where did you get this report from, Jason?
Such political statement/commitment is the result from that Danish Ratt Mussen support for Neo fascism in Ukraine, the state department $5billion dollars politics and now they demand for NATO to send more arms, later they demand for their governing system to be moved into Berlin.
ISIS was created under the same circumstances, you helped us to be what we are, now that we are big enough we demand for your system to change. Hitler did the same, so as Napoleon, so as Roman Empire. This is the trend in social political development by vulture capitalism.
These people look like they are doing incredibly bad impersonations of Saakashvili. Pitiful.
And where are you getting this information from?